


Nothing Like Me Yet

by celli



Category: The Voice RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: picfor1000, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-29
Updated: 2012-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And here he is, Blake Shelton, demo singer, just another tall guy with a guitar and a questionable future in the industry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Like Me Yet

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to zeplum and misspamela for the awesome betas and cheerleading! Title from "To Make You Feel My Love."
> 
> Written for the 2012 picfor1000 challenge. [Here's my picture.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/brunogiliberto/4051292258/lightbox/)

Later, during the auditions, Blake’s mother will stand in a small room with Carson Daly, staring at a monitor and shouting at the judges as if they can hear her.

“Come on, Reba!” she’ll say over and over, her Oklahoma accent deepening by the second. “Turn around. Turn around.”

Carson will have bruises from the grip on his arm that he never noticed at the time. Mama Shelton is a force of nature.

***

Blake sits in the warmup room and fiddles with his guitar. There’s a woman with Rapunzel’s hair, Marilyn’s curves, and a confident attitude all her own across the room from him, running scales up into octaves he didn’t believe were possible. And over there is a dude holding a cat. He looks like a supervillain, but when he laughs everyone in the room smiles spontaneously.

And here he is, Blake Shelton, demo singer, just another tall guy with a guitar and a questionable future in the industry. 

“Sorry to bug you.”

Blake looks up at the guy with all the tattoos he keeps noticing out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah?” he asks.

“I’m Adam. Levine,” he says. He holds out a hand and Blake juggles his guitar pick to his other hand and shakes it.

“Blake Shelton.”

“Can I get a G from you, Blake Shelton?”

“Oh, sure.” Blake hits the note. Adam nods his thanks and wanders back off, practicing a falsetto vocal riff over and over.

Blake watches him for longer than he should before he puts his attention back on his own song.

***

During Battle Round rehearsals, Reba will look over the rehearsal piano at Blake and say, “You’re brilliant, honey. How have you just been doing demos all this time?”

He’ll shrug, uncomfortably aware of the cameras trained on them. “Being out in Nashville isn’t the recipe for overnight success. I mean, don’t get me wrong, people are great to me, even at the labels, but they keep saying country’s not ready for ‘some things’ yet.”

She’ll give him a long, considering look, and then grin. “I think you and Navarro’s boy Adam are going to make some people think.”

“Adam Levine?” he’ll ask, startled.

She’ll just laugh.

***

Adam’s there again when Blake comes off the stage after the run-through with the band. “Wow, you really are the countriest country boy that ever countried, huh?”

“Says the walking rock cliché.” Blake slings his guitar case over his shoulder and steps around Adam to head for the door. “I didn’t think it was physically possible to have more tattoos than Dave. Is that an actual tiger?”

“Is that actual barbed wire?”

The two of them squabble all the way back to the holding room about Blake’s tattoos, Adam’s hair, and their relative guitar playing abilities. Blake keeps forgetting to be offended when Adam grins at him like bickering is more fun than music.

***

In the Battle Round, Dave Navarro will barely choose Adam over his battle opponent – a guy with two near record deals and, oh, a wife and kids. Reba will give him a hard time for it as Adam blows through every round of the competition after that, winning over women, men, kids, grandparents, and probably small woodland creatures. Blake will match him vote for vote, sale for sale.

***

They don’t get to know who’s been picked, or how many slots are left. Blake is two singers ahead of Adam, behind the multi-octave Christina and before Cee-Lo, who seems to have stolen Elton John’s sunglasses and swears he’s making Carson hold his cat while he auditions.

Blake wants to go over and pick a fight with Adam to do something to distract himself from how bad he wants this, but he’s frozen in place, hands locked around the neck of his guitar.

***

In the finale, the two of them will stand shoulder to shoulder on the stage, nearly blinded by the spotlights and nearly deafened by the audience. Reba will be smiling at Blake, fingers laced tight in front of her, and Dave will have his face in his hands as Carson tries to tease him into looking up.

“What are a country boy and a rock cliché doing up here?” Blake will ask.

Adam will laugh and sling an arm around Blake’s shoulders as Carson opens the envelope.

“And the winner of The Voice – by less than two percent of the votes – is…”

***

“Blake Shelton?”

“Please, God,” Blake says under his breath, and stumbles to his feet.

He sees Adam leaning against the doorframe. "I won't get to say it, so break a leg," he says.

Adam puts a hand over Blake's where it rests on his guitar. "Let's kill this thing, okay?"

His grin and the warmth of his hand are still in the back of Blake's mind as he settles on the stool and looks out at the expectant audience, at the four thrones facing away from him, at his biggest chance to change everything.

He closes his eyes and sends up a silent prayer. He can’t look at just the backs of those chairs, so he picks a spot in the audience above to focus on. If, in his mind, there’s a guy with dark hair and a cocky grin in that seat, nobody’s going to know but him. One deep breath, and he plays the first notes of "To Make You Feel My Love."

When Reba’s chair spins around, Blake’s voice wavers for a split second on the note he’s holding. It’s happening, is all he can think. It’s really happening.

He’s got this grin that refuses to leave his face. And half an hour later, when he sees Adam go by on his way to see Carson, he sees the same smile on Adam’s face, and it’s really happening for him, too. He tips an imaginary hat to Adam, and Adam flashes a peace sign at him as he turns away.

“They ain’t seen nothin’ like us yet,” Blake says to nobody in particular.


End file.
